Wikisource

Page:The digital public domain.pdf/34

This page needs to be proofread.
1. Communia and the European Public Domain Project
7

In the last decade, we have witnessed the emergence of a new understanding of the public domain in terms of affirmative protection and the sustainable development of a common pool of resources, especially in the digitally networked environment. This enhanced understanding of the value of the public domain has been undergoing a multi-faceted evolution with academic, civic, institutional and more practical ramifications. Today, the Institute for Information Law at Amsterdam University, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, the Cambridge Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law, the Nexa Center for Internet and Society at the Politecnico di Torino, the Haifa Center of Law and Technology, the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain, the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and a variety of other academic centres devote a substantial amount of their time to investigate the proper balance between intellectual property and the public domain, as detailed by the Communia Survey of Existing Public Domain Competence Centers delivered to the European Commission on 30 September 2009.[1] Several advocacy groups are committed to the preservation of the public domain and the promotion of a shared commons of knowledge including, among many others: the Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Rights Group, LaQuadratureduNet, Knowledge Ecology International, the Access to Knowledge (A2K) movement, Public Knowledge, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Civil advocacy of the public domain and access to knowledge has also been followed by several institutional variants, such as the “Development Agenda” at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), setting specific policy recommendations to protect and strengthen the public domain.[2] The WIPO efforts for the promotion of the public domain were presented at the fifth and seventh Communia workshops.[3] In addition,

  1. ↑ See also Communia, Survey of Existing Public Domain Competence Centers, Deliverable No. D601 (Draft, 30 September 2009) (survey by Federico Morando and Juan Carlos De Martin for the European Commission — on file with the author). The survey reviews the present situation of European competence and excellence centres for the study of the public domain and related issues from different disciplinary perspectives.
  2. ↑ See Development Agenda for WIPO, http://www.wipo.int/ip-development/en/agenda; see also Séverine Dusollier, “Scoping Study On Copyright And Related Rights and the Public Domain”, prepared for the Word Intellectual Property Organization (30 April 2010), p. 69, available at http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/mdocs/en/cdip_4/cdip_4_3_rev_study_inf_1.pdf.
  3. ↑ See Richard Owens, “WIPO and Access to Content: The Development Agenda and the Public Domain”, paper delivered at the fifth Communia workshop, London (27 March 2009); see also Richard Owens, “WIPO Project on Intellectual Property and the Public Domain”, paper delivered at the seventh Communia workshop, Luxembourg
Retrieved from "https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page:The_digital_public_domain.pdf/34&oldid=6366320"